Fighting the Battle vs. Winning the War: Osteopath vs. GP

We have all experienced it: we go to the doctor with back complaints, she diagnoses the problem, gives us some medical advice on what activities to avoid, along with a prescription for painkillers. We take the painkillers, follow the advice, and after some time the problem disappears. Or so we think. Two months later, our back gives way again as we attempt to lift some heavy luggage, and are forced to launch ourselves in the vicious doctor-drugs-advice cycle all over again. Treating a physical problem is always an uphill struggle – that is, unless you eradicate the problem completely. This is where osteopaths come in: they don’t just treat the symptoms of an ailment, they cure the cause of the problem. That is the fundamental difference between your local GP and an osteopath – while a doctor just examines individual symptoms, an osteopath will look at the ‘total person,’ or the body in its entirety. There are various other factors that distinguish osteopathic doctors from medical doctors: 1. Osteopathic doctors are more specialized in the anatomic workings of the body. They receive special training in the musculoskeletal system, while medical doctors merely have a general background knowledge. Osteopaths therefore have a therapeutic as well as diagnostic advantage; they know how one system in the body affects the other in greater detail. 2. Osteopaths also undergo something referred to as Osteopathic Manipulative Training (OMT). This is a special diagnosis technique using one’s hands. This technique stimulates the blood to flow to the target areas, serving as a much more natural way of diagnosing a disease. 3. An Osteopath is trained to use their hands, rather than medication, to help treat an ailment. Instead of using anti-inflammatory treatments, for instance, as a medical doctor would, osteopaths adopt the more natural approach of manipulating the afflicted muscles with their hands, freeing the blood flow and thus motivating the body to engage in its own healthy process. This prevents the same problem from resurfacing in the future. 4. Osteopaths looks at history of the problem, while doctors deal with the symptoms at hand. If a patient has a problem with his knee, for instance, a medical doctor would take a patient’s history through means of laboratory-type procedure, such as blood tests and other physical examinations. An osteopath would acquire this same history by asking the patient whether the knee joints were stiff in the past, whether the pain becomes worse when the leg is placed in a different position, or if increase activity had worsened the problem in the past. By delving into a patient’s history, osteopathic doctors attempt to discover the root of the problem, and proceed to tackle it at the source. The benefits of osteopathy are therefore numerous, but do they override the advantages of visiting your local GP? That is for you to decide. Depending on the nature of your ailment, you might even want to see both. The primary question you have to ask yourself whether your physical problem is a reoccurring one, and whether you want to treat the symptoms, or cure the disease.